iPad Surges Past Linux In Browsing Traffic To TechCrunch; Closing In On iPhone

About four months ago we decided to take a look at our logs to see how many people were visiting our site from the iPad. At the time, the device wasn’t even a month old, so it was surprising to see that it had already surpassed Android in terms of visitors to TechCrunch. Some attributed this to the fact that it was a great web browsing device. Others thought it was because there was an initial surge of purchasers (especially among tech early-adopters) who were browsing a lot to test it out. So let’s take a look to see where things stand now, shall we?

I’ll cut to the chase: the iPad browsing traffic is surging. In the past 30 days, it’s up almost exactly four-fold from what it was back in April. It’s now the fourth most-popular OS that people browse TechCrunch from — last month it surged past Linux machines. The only devices more popular to view TechCrunch from are now Windows machines, Mac machines, and the iPhone.

The iPad is also quickly catching up with the iPhone. And when combined, iOS devices are now well past 10 percent of browsing share.

Below, find the percentage numbers for the past 30 days:

Windows – 55.20%

Mac – 26.88%

iPhone – 6.13%

iPad – 4.51%

Linux – 3.38%

Android – 2.08%

(not set) – 0.69%

iPod – 0.60%

BlackBerry – 0.37%

SymbianOS – 0.08%

Let’s look at those compared to the numbers we published in April 2010:

Windows – 59.68%

Mac – 27.78%

iPhone – 5%

Linux – 3.72%

iPad – 1.18%

Android – 0.99%

iPod – 0.67%

(not set) – 0.54%

BlackBerry – 0.28%

SymbianOS – 0.07%

Now, it’s important to note that traffic as a whole to TechCrunch is up quite a bit in the same timeframe, so it’s not like people are no longer using one platform in favor of another — all boats are rising. But based on these numbers, we can see that iPad is very clearly eating into both Windows and Mac share in this regard.

The iPhone continues to rise, up over 1 percent in the same time span, it’s just not rising as quickly as the iPad. Android is gaining as well, up over 1 percent (which more than doubled its browsing share).

Based on these numbers, the iPad’s initial surge clearly wasn’t some fluke by early-adopters testing out there device. Sure, TechCrunch has a highly tech-savvy audience, but it’s also a large and rather broad audience.

Just for fun, let’s look at some numbers from the past as well. Here are the browsing share numbers from November 2007 (when the iPhone first showed up as a somewhat significant share of browsing traffic):